On Jan. 12,
2002, an estimated 250 million monarchs died - an
astounding quarter-billion insects perished in a single night.
Their bodies and wings fluttered to the forest floor,piling up 2 feet or more in some places.

Every year, hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies converge in the
forests of pine and oyamel fir in central Mexico's Sierra Madre mountains. Some
have flown thousands of miles, from as far away as Canada, to get here. They
will spend the winter clustered in the trees, returning north with warmer
weather and breeding new generations along the way.

On Jan. 12, 2002, an estimated 250 million monarchs died - an astounding
quarter-billion insects perished in a single night. Their bodies and wings
fluttered to the forest floor, piling up 2 feet or more in some places.

The butterflies did not die from disease, poison or predator; they died of
exposure.

It was cold that night, but no records were set. The temperatures were
nothing the butterflies hadn't experienced in the past, since they have come to
this place for countless centuries.

The fatal difference that night, according to scientists, was the trees - or
lack of them. Excessive logging had decimated the area. The forest had been
thinned and fragmented. Without dense stands of timber to serve as a kind of
thermal blanket that moderates extremes in temperature, the butterflies could
not - and mostly did not - survive.

The afflicted colonies have rebounded but not recovered. Today, there are
fewer monarchs in the mountains of central Mexico. The clouds of butterflies
that once rose in the warming sun, creating a sound tourists and researchers
described as a roaring wind, doesn't happen as often anymore.

There are fewer trees as well due to the unabated logging. If nothing
changes, researchers said, the forests and the butterflies will probably vanish
within the next few decades. The environmental consequences of their extinction
are not known; however, biologists said it would be felt throughout much of
western North America.

Popular conservation tends to be all about the animals: the panda, the tiger,
the condor and even the monarch butterfly. These creatures are the iconic faces
of the conservation movement. They are the reason millions of Americans donate
billions of dollars each year to groups promoting environmental and animal
welfare causes.

Being warm and fuzzy or a symbol of nature's majesty only counts for so much,
said Bill Toone, a conservation veteran who has organized and participated in
dozens of programs and projects worldwide.

Toone said it is more important to address the human condition. Good
intentions and money alone, for example, won't save the monarch if people
continue to illegally decimate the forests for firewood and profit.

"We in conservation are making an enormous mistake," he said. "Perhaps it
wasn't a mistake 20 years ago; however, today with more than 6 billion people in
the world and resources stretched thin, we're trying to convince needy people
that they should save the animals first.

"But humans are animals, too, and animals look first to their own interests,
to the survival of themselves and to their offspring. For the vast majority of
the world, that still means getting enough food, clean water and good shelter.
Until those problems are addressed, it's hard to really and effectively save
things like butterflies, habitat or natural resources."

So Toone, with a handful of like-minded advocates, launched the Escondido,
Calif.-based ECO-LIFE Foundation three years ago. The foundation's goal is to
address some of the human problems that underlie and influence conservation:
poverty among indigenous peoples, lack of clean water, poor shelter and
inadequate food.

Toone said until these needs are addressed, many conservation efforts, even
those well-funded and well-advertised, may be nothing more than a delaying
action.

Toone, 51, speaks from experience. He has worked in Africa, the Americas and
Asia. He helped develop and operate the San Diego Zoo's California condor
recovery program, a much-lauded program that exemplifies what happens when
conservation runs into human roadblocks.

In 1987, the last remaining condors in the American wild were captured and
taken to zoos for captive breeding. It was a controversial move, but proponents
said it was necessary: The species was on the verge of extinction, only 22 birds
remained.

Now, there are 289 birds, with 138 individuals released into remote areas of
California, Arizona and Mexico.

"The breeding and management successes of the captive program have been
outstanding," said Toone, who remains a conservation specialist for the
Zoological Society of San Diego.

Condor success in the wild world, however, has not come as readily. The U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that $35 million to $40 million has been
spent on condor recovery programs over the past two decades. After more than 15
years of releases, only five condor chicks have fledged in the wild. During the
same period, at least 67 birds died in the field and 15 others were recaptured
and returned to captivity.

Condors in the wild face many challenges, almost all human-caused. Chief
among them is lead poisoning, which causes mental impairment, disables their
digestive systems and renders them weak and vulnerable to predators. It's the
leading cause of wild condor deaths.

The contamination comes from bullet-laced carrion killed by hunters and
consumed by scavenging condors. A University of California Davis study estimates
more than 30,000 such carcasses are left in the field each year.

"The condor food supply is almost completely contaminated," Noel Snyder, a
retired biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service, told the journal
Environmental Science & Technology.

Toone said efforts to reduce lead poisoning through hunter education programs
are helpful but likely won't solve the problem. It may require dramatic action,
such as banning lead ammunition.

A similar dilemma confronts Mexico's monarchs. There you can't see the
butterflies for the lack of trees and you can't see the trees due to the lack of
protection.

"The butterfly reserve is twice protected by presidential decree," said Toone,
who has been conducting monarch butterfly research for almost two decades.
"Unfortunately, it is safer for the poorly armed (government) officers to hassle
old women for dropping trash than to face the well-organized, well-funded and
well-armed illegal loggers."

The Mexican police aren't the real or only problem, said Toone. Rather, it's
a fundamental question of economics and need.

"Most of the overwintering sites occur on ejido land - land owned by the
indigenous who, like the American Indians, have and enjoy a greater or lesser
degree of independence from the federal government," Toone said. "Sadly, the
indigenous people share in few benefits afforded to others in Mexico. In
general, they are poorly schooled and have few opportunities to improve on their
education. In this area, they are primarily subsistence farmers. Some estimates
say that up to 80,000 trees per year are used simply in cooking and staying
warm."

In their first foreign field project, Toone and ECO-LIFE are trying to help
in two ways. A Web site has been developed to promote education and
communication among indigenous conservation groups, residents and law
enforcement.

"There's a lot of confusion there about what's going on. The police say they
don't know where the loggers are. The people don't believe the police. We're
trying to bring some transparency by establishing a Web site and system where
complaints and solutions can be posted by communities, organizations and the
press."

ECO-LIFE is trying to reduce the amount of timber cut by locals for cooking
and heating by helping them install more fuel-efficient concrete and mud stoves.

"Each stove costs about $150 once all costs are figured," Toone said. "We
work through various nonprofits in Mexico to build them. It's a way of providing
work during the low season (when there are few tourists and no butterflies). We
prefer not to give the stoves away and suggest either a financial contribution
toward their construction or assistance to other groups involved in planting
trees, monitoring the forests or maintaining facilities."

The foundation has distributed more than 200 stoves and hasplans to
distribute 700 or more in the next few years.

These are small efforts and Toone is the first to admit the situation is
complex. It requires the work of many groups and agencies doing a variety of
things.

What sets ECO-LIFE's work apart from other programs, Toone said, is its
immediacy and quick return on investment. Toone believes that's critical for the
butterflies and the people as well.

"We can be quite certain that the overwintering butterflies will disappear
(if things don't change) before the last of the forest and the forest remnant
will soon follow," he said.

"Forget about the butterflies and other wildlife; what will (the local people
and) their children do then? How will they earn an income? Who will feed their
babies? Will they be comfortable looking to the Mexican government for support?
Or will they immigrate like so many millions of others to the streets and
shantytowns of unfamiliar cities and countries to try and survive - often far
from home?

"The management of these forests is much more than simply a wildlife
conservation story; it is about entire communities of people very much
dependent, as we all are, on wildlife resources."

Two years ago, in a much-debated article published in Worldwatch magazine,
conservationist Mac Chapin wrote that "big conservation" - represented by
organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International and
The Nature Conservancy - was increasingly ignoring the needs and demands of
indigenous peoples living in the lands these organizations were trying to
protect.

Robert H. Nelson, a professor of public affairs at the University of
Maryland, calls it "environmental colonialism" - the imposition of contemporary
Western conservation practices upon native populations regardless of the effect
on these populations or whether these practices are worthwhile. "It's obvious
that in Africa, or any poor country, the long-run future of the wildlife and the
environment will be closely tied to the solution of social, economic and
political problems in the country, such as clean water," Nelson said.

"This is a problem for environmental groups, however, because they cannot
easily raise money on that line of appeal, and they also have no particular
skills in wider development issues. Rather than fold their tent, environmental
groups - the American ones anyway - often turn to things like the national park
model that basically tries to isolate certain environments from the rest of the
country."

It's similar to trying to save Africa from the Africans, Nelson said.

The criticism has not gone unnoticed by the major conservation groups. Toone
said there are now numerous examples of significant conservation collaborations.

"The challenge here is not so much to collaborate well with other
conservation groups, but to draw new players into the circle from the
development and humanitarian side of programs."

It does no long-term good, Toone said, if a donated $40,000 water pump fails
and the locals don't know how to fix it. It makes no sense to build housing that
is impractical and inconsistent with Third World realities.

Toone would like ECO-LIFE to be a collaborator. This means meeting needs and
filling in gaps overlooked or not addressed by other aid groups.

"We're not a threat - and I certainly don't want to be perceived as one - to
other conservation groups," Toone said. "We want to collaborate with others, do
things they can't, fill a niche."

"The two words that describe Bill and ECO-LIFE are creativity and passion,"
said Jordi Honey-Roses, a former World Wildlife Fund biologist who met Toone
while working in Mexico. "Bill's willing to take on unique projects that other
organizations are not. Larger organizations are limited by conventional donors
who are risk-averse. ECO-LIFE can get around this, and push the limits as to
what conservation projects can look like."

At the moment, ECO-LIFE's list of accomplishments is relatively modest. The
organization divides its focus between domestic and foreign projects.

In San Diego County, it consists primarily of education programs promoting
water conservation. Much of the education is targeted at children and emphasizes
the close relationships between wildlife and clean water.

"In the United States, conservation has largely alienated people. We are made
to feel guilty for our standard and style of living," Toone said. "Conservation
is seen as our way of doing penance. It shouldn't be that way."

The monarch butterfly program is ECO-LIFE's only current foreign project.
Although, Toone said, there are plans to develop simple water collection and
storage programs that can be used in remote parts of Mexico, Central America and
Africa.

Toone practices what he preaches. His Escondido home is rigged to allow
moisture collecting on his tile roof to funnel into underground tanks. The water
is then used to sustain his gardens and trees. He estimates that in a single
year he collects more than 23,000 gallons of water - and doesn't pay a penny for
it.

"We all need to view resources as a good thing, something to use but to also
save and use again and again," he said.

Years of conservation work, some of it painful, have taught Toone that
humanity is inexorable. The future will only bring more people and more
pressures upon what remains of the natural world.

Toone doesn't pretend to believe that conservation can prevail if it is seen
as coming at too high a price.

"If you ask (struggling) people to sacrifice, to save wildlife," said Toone,
"it's a losing battle."

Rather, struggling people have to see and understand that conservation is not
just the right thing to do; it is a sensible thing to do as well. If they don't,
every species suffers - including humans.